David Sedaris would like to clear the air about prostate exams

We were at dinner, talking about doctors, when my friend Cristina announced that she was scheduled on Tuesday for a prostate exam. Twenty years ago I’d have laughed, assuming that she misspoke. Now, though, I looked at her thinking, Wow!  Then, Well, good for you!

My mind went back to when we first met. She and I had a couple of mutual friends, but neither of them had pulled me aside saying, “You know…” Which is how it should be. This was Cristina’s information to dole out when she saw fit. 

Some of the people around the table she knew, but others she didn’t. The men among us all groaned, as we knew what she’d be going through at her doctor’s office on Tuesday. It’s uncomfortable, it’s invasive. We sympathized with her.

A few months earlier I’d heard someone on public radio use the term “people with prostate cancer.” “Shouldn’t that be men with prostate cancer?” my boyfriend, Hugh, asked.

“Trans women can have it, too,” I told him.

He thought for a moment. “I always assumed that once you became a female, you had no prostate anyone.”

“If that were the case,” I told him, “all men would transition at the age of 60. Hardcore playboys, Baptist ministers — there’d be no exceptions.

Our prostates are ticking time bombs, and who in his right mind would keep his if the only consequence in losing it was that you had to become a woman? This really is true. And think of the effect. No more elderly fathers to take care of: just extra mothers. Adult diaper sales would plummet, and lines outside the women’s restrooms at Eagles concerts would be twice as long.

Cristina is from the Philippines, and as the hours passed I thought of how brave she was to live her truth. That’s not a phrase I’d normally use, but now I could see that it has its place. On an embarrassing, selfish level, I felt grateful that a box had been ticked. “Well,” I could now say at gatherings when the conversation turned to such things, “according to my trans friend Cristina…” I could even supersize it to “trans Filipina friend.” I think that’s tokenism, though?

I was wrestling with this when Cristina e-mailed the following morning saying, “My mistake! It’s not a prostate exam I have on Tuesday. It’s a colonoscopy.” 

I wrote back, “I figured that’s what you meant.”

      
Story produced by Amy Wall. 

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